


Zenith

by Crunchysunrises



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Naruto, Naruto & Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Community: cottoncandy_bingo, Community: hc_bingo, Community: kink_bingo, Community: wishlist_fic, Crossover, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-24 02:22:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crunchysunrises/pseuds/Crunchysunrises
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As if in answer to Kushina's prayer, the sky splits open and rains stars. From amongst the falling stars comes a small, blonde woman, carrying an enormous hammer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elle Blessingway (elle_blessing)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_blessing/gifts).



> **Content Notes:** None  
>  **Disclaimer:** I have no rights to or within the Naruto or Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchises, copyrights, characters or trademarks. This is for fun, not profit.  
>  **Additional Notes:** This fic was written to answer [](http://elle-blessing.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://elle-blessing.dreamwidth.org/)**elle_blessing** 's prompt: Buffy sacrifices herself by jumping into the portal at the end of season five. Instead of ending up in a hell dimension, she wakes up in a world where there's hidden villages, ninja and a different kind of magic (re: bloodline limit techniques, chakra, etc.) ... How she integrates, meets either/or/both Kakashi/Itachi is up to you. (And a nifty quote for kicks. "I tried to kill a werewolf. I failed. Now I feel like I'm not living up to the best version of myself." ~ Damon Salvatore, _The Vampire Diaries_ ) It also fills the "explosion" square on my Hurt/Comfort Bingo card, the "worship" square on my Kink Bingo card, and the "Meteor Shower/Shooting Stars" square on my Cotton Candy Bingo card.

The night is on fire.

The kyuubi is rampaging at the northern edge of the village, shinobi and structures alike burned to black ash in its wake. Minato is inking seals onto Naruto's stomach while Kushina holds the kyuubi at bay, choking out blood and prayers with every breath she exhales. She hates Minato's plan, disapproves of it, but Kushina's body is too damaged to allow Minato to reseal the kyuubi into her before her death.

And Kushina _is_ dying.

In a few seconds, Minato will complete his seal and die with her, leaving their newborn son an orphaned jinchuriki. As he works, Minato prays for Naruto's forgiveness.

The kyuubi gives a particularly vicious yank against Kushina's chains and she screams, staggers, and falls to her knees. Kushina has time for an apology and a prayer before she collapses, her sealing chains fading out of existence.

And then, as if in answer to Kushina's pleas, the sky splits open.

The sky brightens as if the sun has risen even though it is hours until dawn. A star, pale and distant and green, splits open, giving birth to a cascade of shooting stars. They fall to the ground, sizzling out into bright motes of nothingness before they hit anything. The sight is so strange, so incongruous, that Minato stops writing seals on Naruto's stomach and looks up. The _kyuubi_ stops rampaging and looks up.

Against a bright blue sky tinted with green and awash in dying stars, Minato sees a dark figure, falling from the heavens. It looks like a crow, ungainly, awkward, and all too solid against all of that ethereal light. To Minato, the sky looks better for that one, small blot of imperfection.

The figure lands in a neat crouch near Kushina then rolls forward, toward the kyuubi, and finally stands, propping an enormous hammer over one of her shoulders. In her wake, the sky winks out as if the whole astronomical event had been a light to guide her to them. In her wake, it was extinguished.

The night is dark again, only broken in places by the full moon overhead and the kyuubi's many fires.

Minato closes his eyes and opens them, blinking hard to get rid of the afterimages. Ambient light that had seemed bright enough to fight by no longer seems adequate. While his eyes adjust, the woman says something. Her language is odd and filled with too many consonants. Minato, whose eyes are only beginning to adjust to the dramatic change in light, recognizes in her tone both a question and a challenge. Her bloodlust, which is as terrible as the kyuubi's own, buffets them - Minato, Kushina, Naruto, and the nearest shinobi forces. In Minato's arms, Naruto stirs and begins to wail.

"I did," rumbles the kyuubi. Minato is relieved to at least understand _him._ "What're you going to do about it, _Slayer?"_

Minato's eyes adjust in time for him to catch a glimpse of the woman by the light of the moon and the flickering light of the fires surrounding them.

She is small, smaller than Kushina even, and blonde. Her clothes are dark, torn, and bloodied. There is a patch of something blue and shiny hardening in a clump of her hair. What Minato sees of the woman, however, is more afterimage than image because, while the air and ground are still rumbling with the echoes of the kyuubi's reply, she moves.

Quick as a flash, the woman brings her hammer off of her shoulder and around into a blow that slams into the kyuubi's muzzle, knocking him back. The kyuubi yelps and whines, falling onto its side from the sheer force of the blow.

The woman is already upon the fox, her enormous, bulky hammer flashing silver in the flicker lights of the fires, before the kyuubi has even finished rolling onto its stomach. The demon fends off her blows with its whipping tails as it staggers to his feet, all fire and fury.

When it growls and lunges at the woman, she nimbly darts out of the way of its flashing teeth, fiery paws, and flying tails. She taunts the kyuubi as she goes.

Minato, his wailing newborn son in his arms and his unconscious wife at his side, watches as the woman and the kyuubi wage an incongruous battle, both giving and taking ground by turns. The woman uses no ninja techniques but she is fast, faster than his eyes can track, maybe nearly as fast as his Flying Thunder God technique. She is also incredibly strong, strong enough to hit a nine-tails fox demon and make it _hurt._ And, although he cannot understand the content of her words, it is obvious that she is taunting the kyuubi, mocking it for its losses.

When the kyuubi throws back its head and begins amassing its chakra into a demon ball that will surely, _surely_ dissolve the woman, himself, Kushina, and Naruto, and leveled the remnants of the village, the woman darts in to slam her hammer against the fox's forelegs, one after the other, and Minato hears the crack of bones being forcefully shattered.

The kyuubi yowls, its chakra dissipating, and falls forward. It lands on its chest, narrowly missing the woman who had moved only enough to avoid being crushed but no more. From her vantage point, she swings her hammer again and again, raining blows down on the kyuubi's shoulder, its ear, the angle of its jaw, and the side of its snout.

Yowling, the kyuubi frantically rolls away from its tormentor, who chases after it. By the time that the kyuubi regains its feet, one of its eyes has been swollen shut and several of its enormous teeth have been chipped. Demon's blood, which drips from the fox's mouth, sizzles as it hits the ground.

When the fox snarls at the woman, she snarls back and tries to whack it in the mouth with her hammer.

Twice more the kyuubi tries to use chakra attacks against the woman but she is too fast and too unrelentingly vicious to make the demon fox's efforts to amass and focus its chakra worthwhile. The demon is reduced to fighting on her level, its strength and speed matched against her own.

Their battle is like watching two demons fight. At some point, Kushina's cold hand finds its way into Minato's own. When he gives it a gentle squeeze, Kushina lightly squeezes back.

The woman single-handedly does what Konohagakure's might could not, hurting the fox and driving it back despite the frantic snap of its enormous jaws, the savage lashes of its nine tails, and the crushing blows from its massive paws. She avoids most of the fox's attacks, batting aside or staggering under those that she cannot avoid. Every time the fox successfully slams the woman into the ground, she rolls aside from a follow up blow or flips to her feet again before Minato can draw a breath or the fox can capitalize on its temporary superiority.

The kyuubi, however, is not dealing with its setbacks so stoically. It whimpers and limps and favors its injuries, its legendary healing factor unable to keep abreast of the woman's punishing brutality.

Between one breath and the next, the demon fox dissolves itself, turning into a river of fire that whips twice around the woman and then slams into Kushina, trying to find sanctuary in the body that it had so carelessly destroyed when it ripped its essence from hers earlier. Kushina drops Minato's hand as she arches and writhes, her hands clawing at the ground. Her mouth and eyes open wide, as wide as possible, and she screams as if she is being tortured.

Knowing that Kushina is being shredded from the inside out, that her body can no longer house the demon fox, Minato hastily works on his seals again, erasing the bits about sacrificing his life to the Shinigami with a spit-slicked finger and replacing them with the demon's willing confinement in the vessel, his son. Minato finishes modifying the seals just as the demon fox's essence whips out of Kushina.

As the demon's fiery essence whips around them, stirring Kushina and Naruto's hair and singing Minato's coat, a forearm is thrust between Naruto and Kushina. It bars the way between mother and son, its pale underside etched with seals that Minato recognizes as an open invitation to any disembodied demon spirit within the strength of its pull. Wearing such a seal, willingly or not, is like begging to be possessed.

With his eyes, Minato follows the length of the arm up to the girl's heaving shoulder and then to her face. Although her features are hidden from him by blood and shadows, the line of her jaw is set. While Minato had been finishing his seals on Naruto, the stranger had been etching her own seals onto herself with mud, mixed and churned by the blood and body of the combatants.

She was trying to take Naruto's place as the Nine-Tailed Fox's jinchuriki.

For a moment, the demon's essence hovers between his baby's stomach and the stranger's forearm, torn between the two offerings. It darts into the stranger's pale flesh and the woman shudders, her seals flaring fiery red. Minato has time to feel a tangled mix of alarm and relief at the demon fox's choice before the kyuubi's essence comes screaming out of the woman, looking smaller, duller, and more tattered than it had before.

The demon fox throws itself into Naruto's stomach, the seals on his infant son's stomach glowing fiery red as whisker marks carve themselves into the baby's cheeks. And then the seal winks out, fading into Naruto's skin as if it had never existed.

The woman's killer intent flares, the frustration in it tangible to Minato, who looks up from Naruto's face to see her staring at Naruto's stomach, looking grieved. In Minato's arms, Naruto begins to scream and wail again, upset by the woman's killer intent.

Rocking his son with one arm, Minato reaches out. He very carefully smears his thumb through the mud on the woman's arm, breaking the seal. Her skin is very soft under his calloused thumb.

Surprised, the woman jerks her attention from Naruto to him then to the location of his thumb. She grimaces at the remnants of the symbol, her killer intent dropping away as if it had never existed. When she shifts her arm out from under his thumb, Minato lets her go.

He watches as she casually wipes the rest of the seal off and grabs her hammer from where she had abandoned it by Kushina's side during her attempt to take Naruto's place as the kyuubi's jinchuriki - or her final attempt to murder the demon fox. Minato, who remembers how much less robust the demon fox had been after its very brief sojourn in her body, cannot help but suspect that she had been trying to do the second as much as the first.

When the woman moves to stand, Kushina grabs at the stranger's wrist. Kushina's movement is slow and fumbling and her grip is weak. The stranger could easily brush Kushina's hand off. Instead, she kneels there,in front of Kushina and Minato, and gives Kushina her full attention.

"Th-Thank... you..." Kushina rasps and Minato's heart squeezes at the reminder that his wife is slowly dying by degrees.

The blonde woman, although showing no understanding of Kushina's words, nevertheless smiles at Kushina and gently smoothes her free hand over Kushina's long, fiery hair.

With a twist of her wrist, she sheds Kushina's hand and threads her own wrist through the worn leather strap at the base of her hammer in the same movement. It hurts Minato's heart to see Kushina so weak and easily shrugged aside.

Before he can work himself around to feeling anger, the stranger begins the task of gathering Kushina into her arms. Kushina is bigger than the blonde, taller and possessing wider shoulders and more bulk, but the woman lifts Kushina as easily as Minato lifts Naruto, all the while speaking to Kushina in a gentle tone of voice that Minato suspects is meant to soothe Kushina.

It seems to work for Kushina tiredly leans her head against the stranger's shoulder. Kushina smiles at Minato and the now quieted Naruto. When Kushina lifts her arms towards Naruto, Minato obligingly gives their baby to his dying wife. He takes Kushina from the blonde.

The woman stands before him, suddenly awkward and defiant. Her hair is melted in some places and burnt down to the scalp in others. Her face's features are obscured by cuts, burns, and blood. He can tell from the shallowness of her breaths that something is wrong with her ribs and from her weight distribution that she is favoring one leg over the other... or, perhaps, saving her injured leg's strength for one last attack. Her clothes, already in poor condition, are even worse off now and stiffening with blood where they are not torn or melted, possibly to her skin.

 _She took damage from the kyuubi even as she dealt it,_ Minato thinks, noting the way that her shoulders are set and that she is holding her hammer's weight with casual ease, despite her injuries. _She simply ignored it and kept going, something which the kyuubi was unable to do. She's used to fighting despite the pain of it, to fighting demons, perhaps. She's ready to fight me too, if she thinks it necessary._

Minato, despite his own sense of caution and the swelling sense of grief that he feels as he listens with half an ear to Kushina's whispered instructions to their son, tries to look unthreatening.

When he nods his head towards the blonde and then the remnants of Konohagakure, the woman looks around herself. From her expression, she had not noticed Konohagakure before.

 _She fought the kyuubi for the three of us,_ Minato realizes, shocked. Beneath that emotion lurk others, ones that he cannot yet sort out or name, except that he is awed by the strength of Kushina's will to have pulled such a creature from the heavens in order to defeat the kyuubi.

The blonde woman looks at them, himself, Kushina, and Naruto, then around at the desolation surrounding them, and then up into Minato's face. She shrugs.

Minato is not certain what one is supposed to do with a heavenly warrior made flesh but, for this night's work alone, he will take very good care of her. He will carve out a place for her in Konohagakure and create a home for this creature, Kushina's last gift to him, to the village.

When Minato takes his first, cautious steps towards the village, the blonde follows him, step for step.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As if in answer to Kushina's prayer, the sky split open and rains stars. From amongst the falling stars came a small, blonde woman. She brought with her an enormous hammer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Content Notes:** None  
>  **Disclaimer:** I have no rights to or within the Naruto or Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchises, copyrights, characters or trademarks. This is for fun, not profit.  
>  **Additional Notes:** This fic was written to answer [](http://elle-blessing.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://elle-blessing.dreamwidth.org/)**elle_blessing** 's prompt: Buffy sacrifices herself by jumping into the portal at the end of season five. Instead of ending up in a hell dimension, she wakes up in a world where there's hidden villages, ninja and a different kind of magic (re: bloodline limit techniques, chakra, etc.) ... How she integrates, meets either/or/both Kakashi/Itachi is up to you. (And a nifty quote for kicks. "I tried to kill a werewolf. I failed. Now I feel like I'm not living up to the best version of myself." ~ Damon Salvatore, _The Vampire Diaries_ ) It also fills the "explosion" square on my Hurt/Comfort Bingo card, the "worship" square on my Kink Bingo card, and the "Meteor Shower/Shooting Stars" square on my Cotton Candy Bingo card.

Buffy only did it because she was cresting a wave of emotions and endorphins. Truth be told, it was probably mostly the endorphins.

But she had won! She had saved Dawn, killed a demon god, and saved her world! She had gone out on top, undefeated! She was the slayingest Slayer of them all!

And, okay, she had expected to die inside of that inter-dimensional vortex but she was okay with it. She had gotten (nearly) everything that she had ever wanted. Instead, Buffy found herself floating in a maelstrom of stars. It was one of the most amazing things that she had ever experienced.

It got really old, really quickly.

And then it got boring.

Buffy was still seeing stars when she realized that the air pressure had changed around her. She was _falling._

It was still something of a surprise when she saw the ground rushing up to meet her. Honestly, she had just barely gotten her feet under her in time. The forward tumbles, a habit ingrained from cheerleading to diffuse the force of her fall, had been utterly and completely necessary under the circumstances.

And then Buffy had stood up and seen the enormous burning fox, the fallen woman, the blond man, and the screaming baby. She had felt the pulse of the fox's nature against the back of her neck, felt the pulse of her own hidden nature rise in response, and thought, _Why not? I killed a demon **god** earlier tonight. What's a giant flaming fox against that?_

And that pulse, the one that lived in her soul, thrilled.

But, on the off chance that she had misread the entire situation, Buffy asked, "Did you hurt these people?"

"I did," rumbled the fox, surprising Buffy. She had honestly not expected the fox to reply with words. Normally, demonic things just roared and threw themselves at her. A demon capable of human speech was a nice variation on the theme. "What're you going to do about it, Slayer?"

_And it knows who I am,_ Buffy thought, as she threw herself at the giant fox. _It's too bad that I'm going to kill it._

Their fight was intensely, epically _awesome._ It was by far one of the best of Buffy's life. And yeah, she got hurt. And yeah, she got burned. But, in those moments, it was all completely and totally _worth it._

It feels way less worth it several hours later, when she is sharing an old-fashioned hospital room with the redheaded woman and about five dozen other people. The hospital room, which is long and narrow and was designed to hold maybe three dozen patients, is overcrowded. Buffy is so close to her neighbors that she could reach through the sidebars of her hospital bed and grab the sidebars on their hospital beds if she wanted to.

Buffy definitely does not want to.

Everyone else in the ward looks pretty awful in their miles of bandages, casts, and jury-rigged tents. Judging by the wide array of burns that she can see (and smell) on the other patients, they are all victims of the demonic fire-fox. Buffy wonders if she is in with them because she got hurt fighting the demon-fox, too. The other option, that she is in with them because she looks as badly off as they do (even if she feels miles better), is unpalatable to Buffy.

It might also be true.

Every inch of Buffy's body hurts, her ribs are broken, her leg is badly sprained, and she has too many cuts, burns, and scrapes to count. Worst of all, her hair has been burned or shaved off. (Buffy honestly tries not to think about the state of her hair. And, when she does, Buffy prays that she has some hair left under the bandages. Or, at least, retains the ability to grow more hair.)

To add insult to injury, they have taken away her clothes, stuffed her into a paper dress with no back, and doped her up with too few painkillers. (Her Slayer's metabolism makes short work of just about everything, including medication.) This means that Buffy is horribly aware of her surroundings and has been horribly aware of them for the last two days.

She can smell (and practically taste) her roommates' burnt flesh and growing infections despite the nearly overpowering scents of stringent disinfectants and harsh cleaning supplies. Their ragged breaths and half-utterances fill her ears and disrupt her dreams. When she sleeps, Buffy does it lightly, poorly, or all of the above. It is not just their sounds that disrupt Buffy's dreams, though. Trying to sleep in a room with all of these people feels a lot like trying to sleep in a room filled with vampires or other lesser demonic types.

They _all_ make the back of her neck tingle.

Buffy wonders if she has fallen into a world filled with (greater and lesser) demons or if humans who are not from her world just feel different to her Slayer senses.

Going out into public with her butt hanging out of a crappy paper hospital gown seems like less and less of deterrent with every passing minute. Honestly, Buffy would probably already be gone except for one, minor thing.

She really likes watching that blond guy and the redheaded woman with her baby.

Maybe it is because her own dad ran out about the time that Buffy turned up different from everyone else. Maybe it is Buffy has so recently lost her own mom. Or maybe it is because of the way they look at their kid, despite the giant, fiery demon fox in his stomach. These people, this blond guy that everyone defers to and this redheaded woman who talks incessantly to her baby when she is awake, clearly think the world of their kid, even though he had been normal for all of fifteen minutes, tops.

Buffy's own parents had stopped looking at Buffy like that after (the first time that) she confessed to being the Slayer. Buffy had been normal for all of her first fifteen years. (And she had pretended to be normal for another two years after that. Not well, granted, but she had made the effort.) Her second confession of Slayerly-ness had done nothing to improve her home life.

But these other parents, the blond man and his redheaded wife, seem to genuinely love each other and their kid. No divorces or naughty secretaries or kicking their kid out for being different, here. Hell, the redheaded woman does not even seem mad at the blond guy for locking a demon into her baby's stomach. (Admittedly, Buffy is pretty sure that he did it to save the village. And, as the Slayer, she gets that. As Dawn's big sister, though, the entire idea is a no-go. No one is going to get away with locking a demon inside of Dawnie's belly button.)

It's too bad that Buffy is pretty sure that the redheaded woman is dying.

And it just seems like such a shame for someone with a mom like that to never know her.

Which is why, instead of getting the hell out of the (maybe lesser demons') hospital, Buffy finds herself wrapping her thin, hospital-issue blanket around her waist a few times and then sneaking over to the cupboard with all of the supplies in it. She has seen a lot of blood transfusions since she became the Slayer but, thanks to her nature, seeing just one would have been enough. Buffy gets the supplies that she needs and approaches the redheaded woman's bed.

The redheaded woman's bed is at the far end of the room, between a window and Buffy's empty bed. Her son's bassinet is to the side of the woman's bed, between her bed and Buffy's bed. A glance at the kid shows him to be sleeping. (And a moment's hesitation by the bassinet proves that the kid feels no more or less tingly than anyone else to her. Apparently, whatever that blond man did to seal the demon into the baby's stomach worked. The demon is contained and the boy seems okay. But Buffy has to wonders about the long term consequences of the magic. In her experience, there's always some sort of truly nasty consequence to magic, especially the big or complicated stuff.)

The redheaded woman, who is nearly as pale as her pillows and blankets, is sleeping too. Buffy finds that super impressive because she is nearly certain from her observations of the small family that the woman has not only broken most of the bones in her lower body but also refused pain killers on top of that. Since the redheaded woman is breastfeeding her baby, Buffy can understand why she did it. Still, it's super impressive stuff.

_This woman is meant to be that weird kid's mom,_ Buffy decides as she sets up her equipment. That gives her the push that she needs to go through with it and start the transfusion.

If the woman really is a demon, she will respond to Buffy's Slayer blood like all demons do. She will probably live and get healthy and raise her cute demon baby. If the woman is human, well, no harm done. Buffy is a universal donor. And, even though no Watcher has ever seen fit to document the effects of Slayer blood on a regular human, Buffy cannot help but think that her Slayer's blood will help a human woman just the same as a demon one.

It could be Slayerly intuition.

More likely, it is wishful thinking on her part.

Buffy transfuses the blood, anyway.

Once, the woman wakes up while Buffy is transferring her blood into the other woman. She blinks at Buffy with dazed eyes and says something questioning in her own language, which has too many vowels in it to Buffy's ears. Since she has no idea what the woman is saying, Buffy strokes the woman's long, red hair with her free hand and says comforting things in English, even though the woman probably has no idea what Buffy is saying to her, either.

But the woman seems to get Buffy's intentions, if not her words, because she nods and closes her eyes and relaxes back into sleep. Or maybe she is just too tired and weak to stay awake. Buffy likes to think that it is the former, though, instead of the latter.

She has just finished the transfusion and put band-aids on their respective needle marks when one of the weird nurses (or doctors?) comes into the ward. Whatever her position, she scowls at Buffy and shoves her away from the redheaded woman.

Punching the nurse-or-maybe-a-doctor in the face is a reflex. Honestly.

(It is also super satisfying.)

Buffy catches the woman before she hits the ground, despite the way that her own damaged ribs scream a sincere protest. As she lugs the woman over to her own hospital bed, Buffy thinks, _Geez, she's heavy. Way heavier than me. Bigger than me, too._

Stealing the nurse's clothes seems like a natural extension of that observation.

Buffy also strips the pillowcase from her pillow. She leaves the nurse wearing her own stupid paper dress and tucked up in Buffy's own bed. Buffy raids the supply cupboard again, taking bandages, disinfectant, and salve for her own wounds. Buffy dumps her medical supplies into the pillowcase and heads for the nearest window. On her way to the window, Buffy snatches up her troll hammer from where it is resting against the foot of her bed. The weight of the weapon makes her ribs ache but it feels right to have it resting against her shoulder, ready for action.

The window's sash slides up on suspiciously silent pulleys. Nevertheless, Buffy leans out and has a look around. The hospital itself seems to be in a more business oriented part of town because she sees no houses or apartment buildings when she looks around. Thankfully, it is late at night and most of the offices' windows are dark and empty. When she looks down, Buffy discovers that her room is on the hospital's third floor.

Buffy could easily jump that distance to the ground but, in deference to her ribs, she opts to climb it. Buffy twists her pillowcase shut, bites onto the twisted fabric, and slips her wrist through the worn leather thong looped through the base of the hammer. Her descent down the side of the hospital is slow and arduous. Her sandals, which are a couple of sizes too big, are not much help with finding purchase or toeholds. But the grip on their soles is phenomenal, which makes balancing on the thin ledge in front of each window relatively easy.

The climb irritates her leg and her ribs but the pain is nowhere near as terrible as it would have been had she simply jumped.

When Buffy reaches the ground she tucks her pillowcase and hammer under one arm then takes a moment to catch her breath. When she feels better, Buffy casually strolls across the hospital's grounds and out the front gates. Even though she _knows_ that her escape attempt has been seen by several locals, no one raises an alarm.

_Maybe they think I'm one of them because of these clothes. And maybe people break out of the hospital all of the time around here,_ Buffy thinks and a spring finds its way into her step. _Or maybe they just don't care. Whatever's going on, this could work._

She wanders through a sleeping village that looks like something out of one of Xander or Tara's badly dubbed Kung-Fu movies. Buffy can see where the demon fox did its rampaging and escaping that way might honestly be easier. But people always say that criminals return to the scene of their crimes and, while Buffy is no criminal, she does not intend to make it easier for these people to find her.

(She does not think that she was a prisoner because they kept her with their people and let her keep her troll hammer at the foot of her hospital bed. But, then again, no one else in Sunnydale could lift the thing. Maybe they just could not physically move her troll hammer from where she had left it. Or maybe they thought her too banged up to escape. Maybe they thought the third floor was high enough to keep her in line. Surviving the Initiative has left Buffy with a healthy sense of paranoia.)

Eventually, Buffy finds an enormous, open gate. Her shoulders tense, Buffy strolls through it. The guards standing on the walls and on either side of the gates say nothing to her and do nothing to stop her. They barely even look at her.

Joy and accomplishment bubble up in Buffy's heart. She walks until she can no longer see the village's gates and then stops, trusting that if she cannot see them then they cannot see her, either.

_I'm free!_ Buffy thinks and does a little spin right then and there on a darkened dirt path outside of a Kung-Fu village that was half-leveled by a giant burning fox demon. Laughing, Buffy tilts her head back as she spins. Above her stretches an enormous expanse of stars picked out against a dark sky. As she spins, they seem to whirl and twirl about her, reminding Buffy of the place between this world and her own.

When her ribs begin to really hurt, Buffy stops being silly. Instead, she slings her pillowcase of purloined goodies over her shoulder and starts walking again.

There is a whole big new world out there. And Buffy, who finds herself suddenly free from the burdens of her duties, destiny, and even her family, friends, and Watcher, is just the person to explore it. Humming a jaunty tune, Buffy sets out to see everything that there is to see in this new world of hers.


End file.
